Earth’s ongoing nature losses may soon begin to hit national economies. The third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3), a major UN report, warns that some ecosystems may soon reach “tipping points” where they rapidly become less useful to humanity. These tipping points include rapid dieback of forest, algal takeover of watercourses and mass coral reef death.
Ahmed Djoglaf, executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), says “We continue to lose biodiversity at a rate never before seen in history – extinction rates may be up to 1,000 times higher than the historical background rate.”
“21% of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians, 12% of all known birds (and) … 27% of reef-building corals assessed … are threatened with extinction,” said Bill Jackson, deputy director general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The relationship between nature loss and economic harm is much more than just figurative, the UN believes. An ongoing project known as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) is attempting to quantify the monetary value of various services that nature provides for us, such as purifying water and air, protecting coasts from storms and maintaining wildlife for ecotourism. The rationale is that when such services disappear or are degraded, they have to be replaced out of society’s coffers. TEEB has already calculated the annual loss of forests at $2 – 5 trillion, dwarfing costs of the banking crisis.
Humanity must stop consuming the planet. We are consuming ourselves.
WHAT IS BIODIVERSITY?
- UN defines biodiversity as “the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems”
- Considered to provide value to humanity in four ways:
- Provisioning – providing timber, fish, etc
- Regulating – disposing of pollutants, regulating rainfall
- Cultural – sacred sites, tourism, enjoyment of countryside
- Supporting – maintaining soils and plant growth
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